


Before the Bell Tolls

by quinnvicious



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-12
Updated: 2019-03-12
Packaged: 2019-11-16 08:52:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18091262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quinnvicious/pseuds/quinnvicious
Summary: “You know,” Dean begins after a beat of silence, the barely-there slur softening his words with a whisper, “if you were a chick, I would have totally laid the ‘It’s the End of the World’ speech on you by now.”Cas’s brow furrows. “I already know it’s the end of the world, Dean.” He frowns, perplexed. “What does gender have anything to do with it?”Dean shakes his head, a weary smile on his lips. He studies the floor next to him in quiet contemplation. “Not a damn thing.”





	Before the Bell Tolls

**Author's Note:**

> beta'd by [nickelkeep](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nickelkeep)!
> 
> short little thing to get my toes back into the water and celebrate finally catching up with this show !!!

Dean is halfway through a bottle of Jack when Castiel finds him, trying to drown his sorrows and ignore the idea that he may not make it out of the next fight with his brother intact. He’s content to just watch him as he usually does with his arms folded over his chest in the corner of the room. In his weakened body, he finds the musty smell of the books lining Bobby’s home distracting. When Dean asks him why the sour face, Castiel tells him as much.

“Heh. So how _is_ being human treating you?” Dean smirks over the lip of the bottle. He’s abandoned the idea of a glass and has started drinking it straight. Castiel can sympathize with his desire for any sort of oblivion—it’s a road he’d also chosen in the past when all hope seemed lost.

Castiel sighs, and it deflates his whole frame. “Terribly.”

Being human, as it turns out, is an unpleasant experience. Castiel could understand now, why so many humans lashed out with their suffering and frustration. And it _is_ frustrating. The aches—the pains, it’s maddening. The worst part is how absolutely useless he feels.

“There’s just so much physical information to process. I don’t understand how humans do it.” Castiel frowns at the floor. Dean tilts his head to look at him, seemingly pondering some deeper thought.

“Hey, it’s not _all_ bad,” Dean admits with a shrug. He regards Castiel with a loose grin and presents him a glass of whiskey. Castiel eyes it narrowly before muttering something like ‘what the hell’ and tosses it back. He presses the back of his hand to his lips, the glass clenched between his fingers as he chokes on the burn and tries to keep it all in his mouth.

Dean laughs at him—a rough, barely restrained echo of simpler days. Castiel thinks it was worth it just for that.

“I don’t remember it burning that much.” He coughs out, pressing the glass back into Dean’s awaiting palm.

“Welcome to humanity, Cas.” Dean chuckles as he pours him another.

They take turns drinking until it’s nothing but dregs in the bottle, and Dean finishes those off with a pull of swollen lips that Castiel can’t seem to take his eyes off of. They’ve migrated to the hardwood floor to slump tiredly against the piles of books and the dust and grime from years of Bobby’s neglect. He doesn’t realize how hard he’s staring until Dean is staring back, making a face.

“Something on your mind, Cas?”

Castiel’s eyes widen just a fraction and he closes off his mind as if Dean had the power to read it like a fellow angel. The alcohol makes his head swim uncomfortably, and he leans harder into the wood digging painfully into his back to keep from falling over.

“No. Nothing.” He mutters, resolute. Dean’s eyebrows shoot up in a look that tells Castiel that he obviously doesn’t believe him.

“You’re a bad liar, you know that?” Dean chastises from under his long eyelashes, but there’s a smirk playing on his lips.

Castiel looks anywhere but at Dean, his arms resting on the knees of his drawn up legs. He weaves his numb fingers into each other carefully, reminding himself of a cat’s cradle, and the Holy Infant. “Lying is a—“

“A sin. Yeah, I know.” Dean cuts him off. He dismisses him with a huff of a laugh and runs his hands over his face wearily. Castiel takes the opportunity to study him again. It might be one of the last chances he gets. When Dean looks his way, he turns his gaze to the floor. It’s a tell, and one he doesn’t realize at the time.

“You know,” Dean begins after a beat of silence, the barely-there slur softening his words with a whisper, “if you were a chick, I would have totally laid the ‘ _It’s the End of the World’_ speech on you by now.”

Cas’s brow furrows. “I already know it’s the end of the world, Dean.” He frowns, perplexed. “What does gender have anything to do with it?”

Dean shakes his head, a weary smile on his lips. He studies the floor next to him in quiet contemplation. “Not a damn thing.”

Cas is still confused, head tilting as if he could rattle loose some answers from the grey matter. Dean moves to stand, and Cas follows out of reflex. Dean eyes him up and down in a way that has Cas feeling judged, making heat rise unbidden in his vessel as it crawls its way up from his collar-line. He swallows, bared throat bobbing over the knot in his tie. His vessel’s ridiculous number of layers feel suddenly uncomfortable and he longs to reach and pull them away from his borrowed skin. 

“We could die tomorrow,” Dean says with a hint of searching to his voice. Cas isn’t sure just what he’s looking for.

“We could always die, at any time.” Cas reminds him. He’s curious as to what Dean finds funny about that as the man huffs another laugh.

Dean shrugs because Cas is right. His feet shuffle closer and Cas steps back to give him the space he’s been lectured more than once about. He moves until his back is pressed against the old bookcase, the hard edges of several tomes digging into the meat of his back and smearing dust over his trench coat before Dean stops, just in front of him.

“Hell, and maybe I’m reading this whole thing wrong, but—“ Dean is inches from Cas’s face, his breath hot and smelling of whiskey as it washes over the angel. Dean sways just enough, and Cas concludes that he’s more than a little drunk. Cas’s vision swims with the pretty slant of Dean’s features, close enough to watch the freckles blur and he thinks that maybe he’s a little drunk too.

Dean stops talking, gives up on trying to word it and leans forward until his mouth is pressed warmly against Cas’s parted frown. Something foreign in Cas’s chest clenches and he wonders if this body is giving out on him. He won’t have the strength to find a new vessel to inhabit. Something like fear or panic hardens inside him, a lump of wax that melts at the light touch of Dean’s hands under his too-heavy coats, just skirting over the warmth hiding under his shirt and dripping like liquid fire through his limbs. His extremities tingle uncomfortably with the sensation, and he realizes belatedly that his blood’s surging away from them to pump somewhere else.

Dean’s too hammered to notice, let alone be deterred by his lack of response, so he presses his body closer and harder. Like if he gets close enough, he won’t have to face a reality of Cas not wanting this. Cas wants to reach out and pet over his shoulders, reassure him that he’d give Dean absolutely anything he asked for, but his body is frozen.

When Dean finally pulls away there’s fear in his eyes. Cas gapes at him unknowingly, fish-eyed and trying to regulate the in and out of his own lungs, his weakened grace like invisible hands forcing this body to work how it’s supposed to.

“Shit. I shouldn’t have—“ Dean starts to turn, and the fear that Dean is going to leave makes him stop breathing altogether. “Let’s just pretend that never—“

“ _No_ —“ Cas’s voice is hoarse, a broken prayer to keep Dean from leaving him, leaving _this_. “I’m sorry, you just. You surprised me.”

Dean watches him, half turned away like he’s getting ready to run so Cas takes matters into his own hands and wraps his fingers around the flannel hanging off Dean’s shoulders to reel him back in.

“ _Don’t_ leave.” He warns, a low whisper against Dean’s parted lips.

“Okay.” Dean breathes back and stays right where he is.

Cas isn’t sure how to go about this. He’s watched humanity for millennia, but when it comes to courting rituals, there are just far too many to even think about. They’re never consistent, and hardly ever make sense. He’s never seen the point of it all—especially sex, which always seemed messy and repetitive. Castiel is an angel of the lord, no matter how far he’s fallen, and angels just don’t do that sort of thing. _Can’t_ , without a vessel.

Right now, his vessel is acting without the buffer of the pulsing energy that his true form is comprised of. He wonders if it’s his batteries being drained, or the idea that he _wants_ this, that allows him to feel it the way he does. He doesn’t like the idea of losing this on the off chance he’s fully restored. But he also doesn’t like the idea of spending his existence somewhere in between.

But maybe, he thinks, if he has this—if he has _Dean_ —it wouldn’t be so bad either way.

 


End file.
